A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

Saturday, February 09, 2013

Enough Shale Gas To Provide Very Cheap Power For Centuries But Still Enough EU Money To Fund The False Scare Industry

2 from the GWPF (HT Bishop Hill)

A map of shale gas in Britain. Clearly Scotland has at least as much in proportion to our population as the rest of the UK, though I assume the lack north of the Highland line is becaise of granite tocks.

The total is also astonishing - 1300-1700 trillion cubic feet -

Britain could have enough shale gas to heat every home for 1,500 years, according to new estimates that suggest reserves are 200 times greater than experts previously believed. The British Geological Survey is understood to have increased dramatically its official estimate of the amount of shale gas to between 1,300 trillion and 1,700 trillion cubic feet, dwarfing its previous estimate of 5.3 trillion cubic feet.

This is from government figures not yet published but perhaps they will be in due course with sufficient fanfare despite Ed Davy having previously lied about the "leading companies" in the shale gas industry having told him there was less than they had claimed back then and they needed more regulating??

To be fair, with current technology only a 5th can now be recovered, but the same, well actually a much worse ratio, applied when the oil industry started and we have plenty of time to develop the tech.
--------------------------Another piece of news the BBC seem not to be reporting as they push the line that Cameron has struck a great blow for reform by a marginal cut in the EU budget.

European heads of state and government have agreed to commit at least 20 percent of the entire European Union budget over the next seven years to climate-related spending. The seven-year budget was agreed at 960 billion euros.

So that would be E192 billion wasted on pushing windmillery then. Still plenty of money for the 90% of the major "environmentalist charities" (Greenpeace being the semi-honourable exception) who get 70% of their funding from the EU then. If you add the UK & Scottish government additions it comes to at least 90%.

Friday, February 08, 2013

Nuclear and Shale Gas - Lets Not Let The Best Be the Enemy Of The Good

I still have no doubt that nuclear power, if unfettered by unnecesary political regulation, would be a small fraction of the cost of current power - I have previously suggested 7%.

I have no problem with necessary regulation but since nuclear is easily the safest method of power generation the overwhelming majority of regulation is clearly pure political parasitism.

From a purely engineering point of view niclear, being the most concentrated sort of energy should, if the laws of thermodynamics are to be believed, be inherently least expensive.

However since we live in the world as it is it seems that the best thing to cvoncentrate on today is shale gas. With gas having dropped to 1/4 of its previous price in the US we should expect electricity produced by it to drop to about half current gas prices, which curently roughly match nuclear. So if in a fully free market we could have unlimited electricity at 7% of current costs, in one in which shale was unrestricted we could have it at 14% of current costs. That is about £200 a year, rather than £100 but still dar lower than the curent £1,300, heading for £2,000 the LabNatConDemGreens insist on.

Still easily enough to end fuel poverty and make the economy grow, if the politicians want it (or the voters get to decide they want new politicians).

I have come to this conclusion because of a whole range of links provided by the GWPF. But equally lets never let the "renewablists" fraudsters ever get away with saying that any of the lies about neclear they have ever told are in any way more truthful than the lies they are now telling about shale gas, or that if they had not known, all along, that their CO2 scare is a total fraud by total, pensioner murdering, fraudsters, that they could ever have opposed nuclear, as the only practical way to create mass power without CO2:

"Duke Energy’s decision to dismantle a Florida nuclear power plant rather than undertake the costliest- ever U.S. atomic repair shows how rapidly cheap natural gas is remaking the U.S. power industry, hastening a shift from traditional fuels such as coal and uranium. Duke’s Crystal River Unit 3 plant in Florida joins Dominion Resources Inc.’s Kewaunee reactor in Wisconsin as the first to be shuttered in the U.S. because of growing shale gas supplies, serving as signposts for utilities from Japan to Belgium also considering decommissioning reactors. At least four other U.S. reactors are also at risk of early retirement due to new power market economics --Julie Johnsson & Jim Polson, Bloomberg, 7 February 2013
Thierry Vandal, president of Hydro-Québec, told a National Assembly committee hearing on the decommissioning of Gentilly-2 that shale gas killed Quebec’s only nuclear reactor. -- Kevin Dougherty, The Montreal Gazette, 29 January 2013

French industrial groups are up in arms as their once-celebrated nuclear-energy edge evaporates. After decades when their factories churned out everything from steel, glass and chemicals with one of the cheapest power prices in Europe thanks to the country’s 58 nuclear reactors, French companies’ competitive advantage is being whittled away as the U.S. embrace of shale gas cuts energy prices there and as Germany gives businesses fiscal breaks against green electricity costs. --Tara Patel, Bloomberg, 7 February 2013

A shale-fed plunge in gas prices is tilting the power industry toward that fuel, lowering electricity prices and pressuring profits at coal and nuclear generators. At the same time, rising fuel prices and escalating safety repairs are making older, single-unit reactors like Crystal River increasingly difficult to operate profitably. --Julie Johnsson & Jim Polson, Bloomberg, 7 February 2013

The market is telling us that right now, nothing can really compete with natural gas unless it’s renewables that are loaded with subsidies. --Samuel Brothwell, Bloomberg, 7 February 2013

Centrica has abandoned plans to build new nuclear power stations in the UK with Electricite de France, raising serious doubts over the programme. Centrica follows Perth-based SSE and Germany's RWE and E.ON in withdrawing from new-build nuclear ----Tim Sharp, The Herald, 5 February 2013

Centrica is expected to turn its back on building new nuclear power stations in Britain and instead focus its expansion on US shale gas. Executives believe there are not enough incentives to develop offshore wind projects and plan to invest in the US shale boom. With higher profit margins and shale gas offering huge opportunities, Centrica believes it is better to invest in the US. The company is planning to buy billions of pounds worth of cheap shale gas from the US over the next few years to give Britain greater energy independence. --Tom McGhie and Lisa Buckingham, Mail on Sunday, 18 November 2012

The withdrawal of Centrica from its proposed nuclear joint venture with EDF leaves a serious hole in the Government’s energy plans. Surging shale gas production offers ways to fill it, and should strengthen ministers’ hands as they consider how to hold an already fragile nuclear energy policy together. In a complex and fast-moving negotiation, this much is clear: Britain’s obligations under the Climate Change Act cannot be held to ransom by a single French contractor and its shareholders, and nor can Britain’s consumers. –The Editor, The Times, 7 February 2013.

Deposits in banks with branches in the Bakken shale region, which stretches from central North Dakota to the northeastern corner of Montana, soared 15 percent last year, to $3.9 billion, after rising 27 percent in 2011, according to preliminary data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. “By any standard, deposits are exploding,” says Ron Feldman, senior vice president for supervision, regulation, and credit at the Minneapolis Fed. --Anastasia Ustinova, Bloomberg, 7 February 2013

Thursday, February 07, 2013

Is Alex Salmond a Child Abuser?

I was ranting to myself about how every politician, beeboid and journalist who either actively supports the global warming fraud or does not publicly acknowledge that their fellow politicians, beeboids and journalists and their parties are deliberately impoverishing us are, by definition, obscene, corrupt, lying thieving, murdering, child abusing, hypocritical, parasitic totalitarian, subhuman, eco-Nazi obscenities.

Then I caught myself.

Am I really right to call all the bastards child abusers?

-- Nearly 60 percent of children said they feared global warming and environmental disasters-such as hurricanes, tornados and flooding-more than terrorism, car crashes, and even cancer (22.3 percent feared terrorism most; 14.6 percent cancer; 5.9 percent car crashes). -- Nearly one-third of children reported thinking about global warming a lot and worrying about how the effects of global warming will change the planet and directly impact their lives. Another 41.2 percent think about it sometimes and say that they are somewhat worried. -- Roughly 60 percent of children surveyed believe that more needs to be done in their community to help the planet and stop global warming. -- When asked what effect of global warming worries them the most, the majority of kids surveyed are most afraid of the toll it will take on the lives of people.

The figures were given to members of the House of Commons Health Committee as part of its inquiry into the safety of patients.

NHS managers have already drawn up a list of serious mistakes which doctors and nurses are required to report in order to build a more accurate picture of the numbers who die as a result of mistakes by hospitals. The blunders include carrying out the wrong operation on patients, administering the wrong drugs, leaving instruments inside patients after operations and failing to put up bars to stop patients falling out of bed.Professor Richard Thomson, from Newcastle University's institute of health and society, said the most reliable evidence showed around 10 per cent of patients admitted to hospital suffered "harm" because of treatment. He told the committee that the number of overall deaths caused by medical care going wrong was far from clear but that some estimates put it at up to 40,000 a year.

"A definitive study is needed to address the size of this problem and to identify priorities for action," he said.

Official figures from the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) suggest that around 2,000 NHS patients die each year as a direct result of errors in treatment - half of which could have been avoided. An estimated 5,000 die from superbug infections.

He said:

The CDC estimates that there about 99,000 annual deaths from hospital acquired diseases, and the number is growing. By contrast, deaths from traffic accidents peaked at about 50,000 a year a few decades ago, and have been dropping ever since. We’re down to under 35,000 a year now. Of course much of that decrease is due to modern medicine and modern emergency hospitals.

It’s just one more thing to worry about.

For a short period of time when I was in high school I was employed as a junior blood technician at a downtown Memphis clinic. Standards in those days were much lower than they are now, of course, but one thing we were taught was meticulous if somewhat drastic sanitation. One of the practices we used was periodic sterilization of darned near everything with carbolic acid, which, I admit, was pretty drastic. It used to be that every biology lab had a bottle of carbolic acid for sterilization, and you could ever get soap with carbolic acid in it – I know, because we were required to use it to wash our hands before and after taking a blood sample. I don’t suppose they do that now. I do wonder how a bug could develop a resistance to phenol, and I doubt any have done so. Maybe we need to go back to something like that? I mean, how much do we spend on trying to prevent traffic deaths, which seem to account for about half the number that you get from hospital infections, and we’re only discussing deaths now, not infections from which people recover.
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Note the wide difference between Professor Thomson's figure "up to 40,000 a year" and the NHS saying 2,000 + 5,000. Either he is way out wrong or the NHS are criminally complacent. I can only guess which but echo his call for a "definitive study".

The US has a population 5 times ours so extrapolating from their figure we should expect about 20,000 hospital infection deaths so we are either doing much better or worse than them.

Road deaths however, at 1901 in 2012 are far lower than in the US and, by either estimate, far lower than hospital deaths (27% or 4.7%)

Monday, February 04, 2013

Important News of the Day - Richard III Dead

Years ago I was one of those strongly on the side of Richard III. Probably my liking for the underdog and general willingness to believe conspiracies but I thought it likely Henry the VII not he killed the Princes in the Tower.

This came back to me today when it was announced that the body beiing examined by Leicester University really was, if DNA is to be believed, Richard III and that he had indeed died fighting rather than looking for a horse. The probably killing blow having come from what is likely a halbard - a large axe on a long pole.

Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on a project to identify the bones, told reporters that tests and research since the remains were discovered last September proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that the “individual exhumed” from a makeshift grave under the parking lot was “indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England.” Part of the evidence came from DNA testing by the geneticist Turi King, who told the same news conference that DNA samples taken from modern-day descendants of Richard’s family matched those from the bones found at the site. The skeleton, with a gaping hole in the skull consistent with contemporary accounts of the battlefield blow that killed him, was exhumed in the ruins of an ancient priory.

I do now think it likely he killed the Princes, officially his nephews, or at least that they died under his protection. If not he would have produced them. Though it may be that others, particularly the Duke of Buckingham did it without his permission.

When Henry II's knights killed Thomas Beckett history assumes it was done without his approval though there seems no doubt he asked for it; Richard, on the other is assumed guilty. Such is how history is written.

Interestingly the question of the Princes was one that Henry VI actively didn't ask and did not seriously use as part of his justification for overthrowing Richard. Personally I think what did for him was the death of his son in 1484. Thus leaving no real successor to keep the wars going if he were overthrown. That would have been a moment to reinstate his "nephews" as his legitimate successors had they still been alive at the time.

While the killings are normally seen as particularly evil there is an alternative. Henry does not get criticised for the judicial or sometimes non-judicial execution of almost everybody other than himself with a claim to the throne. Indeed historians (he was on the winning side) generally agree that this was a wise, if unattractive, precaution which prevented the outbreak of new wars and thus saved far more lives than it cost.

In that spirit the reason I placed apostrophes around "nephews" earlier is important. There seems no real question that Edward, the previous king and officially Richard's brother was not his father's son but the offspring of a fling his mother had. He was thus not legally in the line of succession. Richard also justified his supplanting of the princes by saying that he had found out that Edward's sons weren't legitimate either, since he already had a common law marriage. This has normally been assumed to be just spin but it is consistent with Edward's character and was accepted by Parliament.

While legitimacy is not much of an issue to us it was a massive one to medieval people (Richard himself had an illigitimate son whom he never thought of making his heir). While killing his nephews would indeed have been a great sin by his lights killing a couple of bastard sons of a bastard, claiming the throne, to maintain the peace of the realm might well not have been - indeed he might have seen it as his duty.

Always difficult to remember that people of centuries ago had different values from today's.

Anyway I will be watching C4 at 9.00 tonight.
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In other news today a nasty little ecofascist turd called Chris Huhne, who used to be the the next LibDem Leader and who went on and on about how he wasn't really guilty of perverting the course of justice has plead guilty. Prison is almost always the sentence.

His political career is over. High probability his party's political career is over as well. In the, previously Lib/Con marginal,by election UKIP and Tories will take the top 2 places (I very much hope UKIP leads) Labour probably 3rd and the LDs will be facing the BNP and Greens for 4th to 6th places.

Will Clegg be working hard for the LD candidate or will he effectively ask voters to support the Tories to stop UKIP?

Sunday, February 03, 2013

2 Letters on the EU - One Unpublished, One Lets See

A couple of letters sent out to the Scottish and in the first case also UK press on Cameron's referendum promise and the effect of our entry without a referendum in Scotlanmd respectively.

The first was unpublished and the 2nd, which went out today, I suspect will not reach the literary standards of our press - either that or the press, like the BBC, are heavily censoring the debate:

Sir,

The Conservatives are now denouncing Messrs Miliband, Clegg and now Salmond, for their opposition to a referendum on independence from an EU which makes 75% of our laws as showing their contempt for democracy..

Well yes but wasn't it an affront to democracy the previous week when Cameron was also still against a referendum?

Wasn't it an affront that "cast iron promise" Cameron went back on his promise to support a referendum over the Lisbon treaty (albeit slightly more slowly than the LabNatDems did)?

If we have a right to a say haven't we a right to a say before Bulgars and Rumanians get the right to come here in unlimited numbers?

Before, with the EU costing 150 bn a year we are another 700 billion down?

Or does anybody actually think this "renegotiation" is going to dramatically change anything, including the fact that the EU has, for decades, been the slowest growing part of the world economy and is now in recession as the rest of the world grows at 6%?

If not this offer of a referendum, long after Cameron's PMship is likely to be history, is simply smoke and mirrors to keep us obedient.

Neil Craig (Sec, UKIP Glasgow Branch)
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Sir,

I note that the SNP are opposed to a referendum on independence - independence from the institution that creates 75% of our laws, the EU.

Indeed at recent First Minister's questions their leader seemed to be saying that the Scots shouldn't even get a vote on whether as an "independent" country we would sign up to the EU. This despite the obvious fact that, with no bargaining power, the terms we get would almost certainly be far harsher, being limited to the formal terms for new countries, excluding the various opt outs Westminster has negotiated over the years.

It has been calculated that these regulatory opt outs have saved 1.8 million jobs in the UK. Proportionately to our population, removing those opt outs will thus cost 140,000 Scots jobs. Possibly more since we have a high rate of engineering, agricultural and fishing jobs and lower of office ones. But such is the SNP enthusiasm for "ever closer union" that we won't even be asked if we want this.

Neil Craig (Sec, UKIP Glasgow Branch)

Ref - The 1.8 million figure comes from a soon to be published work from the Freedom Association "‘Europe’ doesn’t work: the three-million-jobs-at-risk lie and related misconceptions"